Gizmodo: language

"Unfriend" Declared Word of the Year

Brian Lam — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:36:29 EST

The New Oxford American Dictionary declared "Unfriend" the word of the year. It beat out hashtag, netbook and sexting, among other nominated words. Oxford defines the verb as: "To remove someone as a 'friend' on a social networking site such as Facebook." I think they should include offline usage, too, like when you stop calling people back entirely or leave people at rest stops on road trips. What, you guys don't do that? [CNN]

Microsoft Axum Programming Language Focuses on Multi-Core Processor Development

Jason Chen — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:18:33 EDT

The latest .NET-based programming language by Microsoft is Axum, which was previously known as Maestro. It's neat because it's aware of concurrent computing, the paradigm of having multiple processes or programs run simultaneously, which makes it optimal for taking advantage of multi-core processors. [MSDN via Slashdot]

Is "Nerdic" Really the Fastest Growing Language?

Kit Eaton — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:30:00 EDT

According to Pixmania.com's research, the speedy growth of consumer electronics and associated buzzwords and acronyms has created the "fastest growing language" in Europe. The study says it's more widely spoken than any single European language and is used by all ages. More words get added to it each year than are added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Hmmmm. What exactly is this "nerdic"? Read on for what the study suggests are the top ten words/phrases... and why we think it's all rubbish.

Pixmania's top ten: WiMax, Rickroll, UGC, mashup, RFID, Android, HDMI, fuel-cell, HSDPA and DVB-H.

There's also a "bottom ten" list too, which includes dial-up, KB and, of course, HD DVD.

And what's this about it being a language? Of course global adoption of a technology adds certain phrases to all languages— I mean, just a small bunch of decades ago few people would've understood the words "cellphone" or "hard drive" or "SCART." But does that really make it a language? No, it's not even a dialect. Does it even help non-nerds understand the tech they're buying, no matter what country they're buying it in? Remember the consumer frenzy that stirred up around digital cameras and the megapixel race? And the multitude of terms about HD TV: all that 1080i, 720p (really 768p) nonsense?

Sorry, Pixmania, but you lose. [Pixmania via Pocket Lint]

ICANN Testing Domain Names In Chinese, Cyrillic, Arabic and Other Alphabets

Wilson Rothman — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 10:10:11 EDT

ICANN, the governing body of domain names, says it will test out web addresses using Arabic, Persian, Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, Tamil and both simplified and traditional Chinese. I guess this means that the inevitable collapse of all language into a bloated English hodgepodge is on hold. While it's nice for people to get domain names they can actually read, it pisses me off, because I like navigating non-English sites by their forced use of Roman-alphabet tags. Ironically, as machine translation gets better, the use of more and more languages and alphabets on the web might not really detract from its universality. But I can't help thinking there's something scary in this decision, scary, that is, for monolingual America. [Yahoo/AFP]

Baby Monitor++

johnb — Mon, 15 May 2006 15:57:54 EDT

In order to monitor his child's early language development, researcher Deb Roy has wired his house with 11 cameras and 14 microphones. The baby will be monitored for 14 hours per day in order to watch his development over time. Roy and his wife can erase recordings or turn off the cameras if they need to get intimate or cuss each other out, but at the end of the day the video is sent to MIT for computerized processing.

Computer algorithms identify activity in specific sections of each room and collect these into so-called "behaviour fragments". Human analysts then classify specific acts, such as making coffee or doing the dishes.

Roy hopes to discover how babies learn language and, as an added bonus, gets to feel like the NSA for at least half the day.

Watch language grow in the 'Baby Brother' house [NewScientist]